


welcome home

by namio



Category: AR∀GO ロンドン市警特殊犯罪捜査官 | Arago
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, In which Oz grieves and heals, Original Character Death(s), Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 02:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4122313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namio/pseuds/namio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the ghost is silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	welcome home

o n e - -

  


The thing about sorrow was that it grabbed you by the throat, pulling you upwards until your eyes were heaven-bound, until they stared at the milky white nothingness that domed the earth.

But his mind was grounded, really-- grounded like the bag of charred bones lying several paces away, like the earth he dug with the shovel a kid from Royal Air Force gave him. --cold descended upon the hills like a veil; o mist, o my winged sister Mist-- And he returned to the ground to dug a hole, another hole, another hole.

They didn’t make a perfectly straight line, the graves. A bit like a poem out of rhythm. A road without destination. A bit like his heart.

So yes, he dug down and down. The dirt built up fast. The blood pooled down fast; the splinters dug and the blisters burned, carving a sad song into his veins. It was like a reverse aubade: it bade the day farewell instead, the same way he bade farewell to his Day.

The rain pooled. Though the mud was up to his thighs, though the water turned his work into a sloppy nothingness,

he dug.

* * *

 

‘it’s going to be fine. there’s nine of us.’

angie’s smile was always reassuring, but perhaps a bit more ever since edna’s gone.

* * *

 

Nine more crosses. He didn’t remember who planted them-- not him, he was in hospital for severe infection and dehydration, and they were pumping nutrients into his bloodstream-- but the second realisation was at the letters on the wood, which swirled like they didn’t know where to go. The hesitant trail left him at loss.

No one would remember who they were. No one would remember Fraser, with his curled lips and set jaw and paternal kindness. No one would remember Willow, whose impish grin reminded everyone of his own, or Kevin, who had only turned sixteen and whom Oz promised to take out for drinks after the missio--

\--faint like a waning myth, faint like a myth, they’d escape the pores in his brain and evaporate.

First month, and he already felt like he forgot how it was to wake up. Strange, how fast things turned into mist.

* * *

 

It kept coming back to ask him: which bones were Blaise’s? Which shard of ash was Tim’s deft hand, which was Mike’s careful eye and his talent for photography, his aptitude for capturing memories? It was like Gil all over again-- they grabbed a handful of dust as though it would substitute her, as though all things returned to earth like it was nothing but dirt. Cells decompose. Maybe so did memories, because it no longer seemed to matter.

He forgot the curious way Lonan’s lips stretched as she smiled. The memories evaporate. The body decomposed.

The droplets of former thoughts floated into the clouds. Each step he took echoed in the earth where They spread. The funny thing about grief was it enveloped you: he could taste the things he forgot in the rain, and he could hear the whispers of crackling fire when his head rested on the grass bed, eyes closed for a hopefully eternal sleep.

The funny thing about it was how it could fade, as though the dirt and air would stop poisoning his lungs.

 

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t w o - -

  


He had a simplistic mantra: hold on, hold on, hold on, hold o--

n.

He was here for a reason. He was given a duty he must carry. He was given things he must bury. He would march on, on, even though he wasn’t sure what the word meant and where to go. Forward, he supposed. It was like he was heading off to meet Godot, though who and where he didn’t know.

‘I will leave for home,’ he says, but he stops himself. ‘No, we must wait for Godot.’

He tried not to look at the ropes, because unlike the two, he doubted he could stop himself from hanging.

Sometimes he thought of the past, like how at times one looked at a memento and tried to grasp at the memories. He’d forgotten the slight slouch of Tim’s posture whenever he drew by now, forgot the angles and the curvature. The unfinished decorated dagger did nothing to remind him of the satisfied grin he had after it was finished.

The thing was this: mementos were a nook for the living. It didn’t talk of how the dead were.

Though once he called their phones:

“I’m currently busy. I will get back to you later.” Well, Mike really wasn’t one for words.

But Fraser’s struck him like a realisation-- “Hello, you’ve reached the number of Fraser Miller. As of now I am away, but I will get back to you as soon as possible. Please leave a message after the _beep_ \--” and it was the past Oz that made the sound, complete with badly concealed grin and all. The voice was more tangible than any pressed flowers and tea-stained cups, than the white crosses over ash-filled mounds.

“Answer your darn phone,” Oz said after the tone. “What’s the point of having one if you’re not going to answer it?”

Beep, beep, beep.

The tone died out the way dusk turned to night: with one last flash of taunting light, then nothing. Sometimes the ghost is silence.

* * *

 

it’s kind of easy, planning how to end it: he stumbled into battles exhausted, starving, dehydrated, and it was so, so easy to stumble and fall.

But he didn’t. He had one last thing to do, after all. One last thing to do. One last thing.

Last. Last. last.

last

* * *

 

He kind of wanted to visit their graves one last time before going.

 

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t h r e e - -

 

They gave him meds, and he swallowed them every day. Made time crawl, sometimes. Made him crawl for sleep. Some nights he lied awake, some nights he lied on his side, dizzy.

Days pass. Months pass. When he blinked awake again, coherent for the first time in a long time, a year had passed.

  


**Author's Note:**

> There will be healing. There will be OCs, too.  
> But not in this part.


End file.
